Pedagogical wellbeing & the Leeds Curriculum
Pedagogical wellbeing & the Leeds Curriculum: The embodiment of wellbeing & the university experience
Bridgette Bewick (School of Medicine)
Project Overview
Universities are spaces that inspire students to achieve high quality learning outcomes and sustained personal development. They are also places where young people report more mental health problems and lower wellbeing than their non-student peers. One solution is to embed wellbeing into the university curricula. An understanding of how to embody pedagogical wellbeing is necessary if universities are to deliver improved student mental health and wellbeing outcomes.
This Fellowship will develop pedagogical wellbeing by investigating how to facilitate and develop embodiment of wellbeing in the Leeds Curriculum. The Fellowship will promote best practice by identifying and distributing examples of effective pedagogical wellbeing, and identifying opportunities to develop and extend current provision. The views and experiences of students and staff are central to this Fellowship. To facilitate this practice, the Compassionate Curriculum Network promotes a holistic approach to embedding wellbeing in to the curriculum.
The Compassionate Curriculum
Compassionate Curriculum is about developing educational practices that are supportive of/conducive to fostering wellbeing and sense of belonging for students and staff.
During monthly Compassionate Curriculum Conversations we discuss questions such as what might a compassionate curriculum look like in practice? How can we design, deliver, and assess in ways that help (and don’t hinder) positive wellbeing. We might think about aspects of curriculum design, timetabling, integration with extracurricular activities, welcome and induction, personal tutoring and our overall pedagogy.
The conversations are an opportunity for people to come together and explore specific examples/challenges/considerations as well as the ‘higher level’ contemplation of the wider discourse. Find out more about the Compassionate Curriculum Network.
Project progress
- Project outputs have contributed to the Belonging@Leeds resources to support facilitation of sense of belonging within the University community.
- Bridgette was invited to write an essay for the first edition of the Vice Chancellor's World Changers essay collection. The essay 'Why do we need a compassionate campus?’ was published in December 2021.
- In July 2021 Bridgette was invited to take part in a podcast as part of the School of Education's Inclusion and Education podcast series at the University of Leeds, her podcast was on Student metal health and is still available to listen to.
- Early in the project Bridgette was keen to highlight the relationship between the curriculum and student wellbeing. She wrote a blog post on ‘Placing wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum’, as well as an overview of the project the article also features input from students.
- In October 2019 Bridgette was approached for an interview by VICE magazine, who published the article Universities Must Confront the Student Mental Health Crisis.
If you want to know more about the project / outputs please email Bridgette (b.m.bewick@leeds.ac.uk).
Project start date: October 2019